A psychiatric nursing perspective on mothers' experience with children who progress poorly at school

Abstract:

Mothers have hopes, wishes and expectations about their
children's education. The hopes, wishes and expectations will be
seen to being realised as long as the child progress well at school
Childen who progress poorly at school, disappoints, frustrates
and stresses their mothers with consequential physical and
emotional symptoms. The Psychiatric Out patient's Child and
Adolescent unit assesses diagnose and make recommendation on
the children who progress poorly at school as so refered by their
schools. Mothers accompany their children for the purpose of
history giving and any relevant information should it be needed
during the course of the assessment of the child
Mothers reacted differently to their children's poor progress at
school, and to their children's inability to perform or complete
assesment tasks as given to them as part of the assesment
procedure. Some cried, some showed frustration, by turning
their backs on their children, by shouting at them and even
making excuses for their poor performance. The researcher then
developed an interest to undertake a research on the mothers
experience with children who progress poorly at school
A exploratory, descriptive, contextual and qualitative research
was undertaken to find out the mother's experience with children who progress poorly at school.
Permission was obtained from gatekeepers. A pilot
phenomenological interview was conducted with a mother whose
child progress poorly at school, who meet the selection criteria
and the interview guide was confirmed. Phenomenological
interviews were conducted with thirteen mothers who were
purposively selected. Steps were taken to ensure
trustworthiness. Tesch's method of data analysis was followed
to analyze the data
The results indicated that mothers with children who progress
poorly at school, are dissapointed, frustrated, in denial, stressed
and suffer depressive symptoms
Guidelines for supportive action by the psychiatric nurse have
been described. The possibility of applying the results of the
research for use in nursing education, nursing research and
nursing practive have been described, as well as the use of the
research results by other medical professionals in their own
disciplines
Mothers with children who progress poorly at school need
support from psychiatric nurses in order to facilitate promotion,
maintenance and restoration of their mental health as an intergral
part of health.